Rescuers digging on Monday through the rubble after Morocco's deadly earthquake warned that the traditional mud brick, stone and rough wood housing omnipresent in the High Atlas mountains reduced the chances of finding survivors.
"It's difficult to pull people out alive because most of the walls and ceilings turned to earthen rubble when they fell, burying whoever was inside without leaving air spaces," a military rescue worker, asking not to be named because of army rules against speaking to media, said at an army centre south of the historic city of Marrakech not far from the quake epicentre.
In a region not used to such powerful quakes, even concrete homes or buildings often lack anti-seismic design, experts said, leaving survivors and rescuers to sift through mounds of rubble with hardly any walls left, where homes once stood.
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